I publish older women writers because I need company. I have
always believed that how we imagine our lives, how we make meaning of
living, comes largely from literature. The older I get  Im
81  the more I find myself seeking older women writers to tell me
about myself. I am still acutely aware of how skewed my understanding
of myself was in the years of growing up, entering womanhood, married
life, motherhood, when there were not many writers in whose work the texture
of my life, my feelings, my side of the story as a woman had been
transformed by the imagination. At this stage of my journey through life,
I feel alone, again in a largely unimagined world. I need to read what
is written from the perspective of older women so I can imagine myself
part of a varied, vital community, not as an anonymous, marginalized,
stereotyped senior. But there are not enough of us. From the
point of view of age and gender, we are the most under represented among
published writers; older women writers from minority cultures are even
scarcer. I publish older women writers because we are in short supply.